


Forgotten, Forsaken, Forlorn

by SeverinadeStrango



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom - A. C. Crispin
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Gen, Heavy - Freeform, Implied Torture, Set when Beckett was around twenty or so in age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 10:14:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12430650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeverinadeStrango/pseuds/SeverinadeStrango
Summary: Even after he'd been kept aboard Le Requin and tortured mercilessly for weeks, Cutler's father still refused to pay the ransom to have him set free.  It was only a matter of time before he lost hope.





	Forgotten, Forsaken, Forlorn

**Author's Note:**

> An entry for Day 20 of Tumblr user horrificmemes' "31 Horrific Days" challenge. If you enjoy my writing, more of it can be found on my own Tumblr page - the url of which is the same as my username here.

Everything was slipping, the world was spinning, and yet, he could still _hear_ them calling after him. Jeering, perhaps? Laughing? They hadn’t intended for this to happen, he’d been their only source of entertainment for – what was it, weeks now?

Perhaps in a way, he had _won._ They wouldn’t _get_ to torture him anymore, they wouldn’t be _allowed_ to play with him – it wouldn’t be fun, not when his corpse wouldn’t respond like he had when he was alive. Now, only just eighteen and far too young to have experienced what he had been put through, Cutler Beckett felt himself slip away into oblivion for what would be, he hoped, the rest of eternity.

The first _person_ he actually saw, he did recognize – that face was so much thinner than he had remembered it, and heartbreakingly so – she looked so worn, so utterly _tired._

“Mother,” Cutler said, and it came out as more of a choked gasp than anything. He was dead, yes, dead and gone, but he was with her and could at last apologize for his failures, for everything that he had done – for what a burden he had been, for all the grief and worry that he must have caused her. She didn’t hear him, though – and that hurt even _more_ than seeing her in this sorry state in the first place. 

_Get it over him!_

There was a sudden rush of _cold,_ it chilled him to the bone and he suddenly couldn’t _breathe_ – which made no sense, until he realized that those voices he was hearing was _not_ some figment of his conscience. No, he was _actually_ hearing them, and he recognized them even in his chilled stupor as the voices of a handful of the crew. They couldn’t kill him, not when there was a ransom on his head. 

Cutler Beckett found himself wrenched back into the world of the living in the next several seconds, coughing up an enormous amount of water as well as what felt like a lung and a half as he simultaneously gasped for air, making a wretched wheezing noise that he actually _scared_ himself with. 

He wanted to cry. 

At least in death, he could have won – they’d never have the satisfaction of getting any sort of ransom money out of his capture, his torture, they would no longer be _able_ to kick him about for their own amusement and pleasure. But when he was alive? They could torture him to within an inch of his life, yes, but they _refused,_ they refused to kill him, not while their Captain had such a high price over his head (even though his own _father_ had blatantly refused to pay it). 

For the first few weeks, he’d had some hope. Eventually, there had to be _someone_ – perhaps Jane would convince Father that he was _worth_ saving, maybe the executives of the East India Trading Company would find out what happened to him and send someone to retrieve him, anything as long as he was off this wretched hull, but as the weeks continued to go by with no sign of change, it became clear that no, there was _no one_ coming for him.

He was alone.

He had stubbornly refused to die up until then, he had refused to give in – but this all reversed itself in an instant, without any hesitation _whatsoever._ Right now, he was quite sure that if death decided to come for him anytime in the next minute, hour, day, _year_ – he would not lift so much as a finger to stop it. In fact, he would welcome it – because after what _he_ had just seen of the world beyond?

Death, he thought, his throat burning and his wounds stinging, must be paradise.


End file.
